and I jumped out of bed
and went out."

"Well, and what then?" asked Arthur.

"I saw somebody hurrying along, and followed till I came to the
doctor's cottage when I stood just under the open window. I could
hear some one inside and finally came to the window. I was too
late, and the first thing I knew somebody jumped out and upset me.
I grabbed him by the leg, and he gave me a crack in the eye that
made me see stars. Then he got away, and I found myself in your
tent at last instead of my own, and later I fell over the tent rope
and got another bump."

"And what do you make out the fellow was doing in the doctor's
cottage?" asked Harry.

"Putting back the manuscript he had fixed up. He had written in
the lines he thought were some one else's, and then he put it back.
He must have just come from taking it away when I first heard him."

"Things fit in pretty well, Art," said Harry. "Pete Herring has
always had it in for Jack since he first came here. Do you remember
what Jack said to him? 'What was your father?' asked Pete in that
nasty way he has, when Jack told him his father was dead. 'A gentleman,'
said Jack and the emphasis he put on the word just hammered home the
idea that he didn't think Pete was one. It was the neatest thing I
ever heard. Do you remember it?"

"Yes, and I guess Pete hasn't forgotten it either."

"Well, he was pretty sure that Jack would take the prize, as he
generally does, and he fixed up this plot, never supposing that he had
got hold of one of Jack's own poems."

"He always makes some stupid break like that," said Billy, "that
upsets him. It takes a smart fellow to be a rogue, and Pete isn't
quite smart enough. Another time when he tried to get back on Jack
he made some such blunder as this, and gave himself away."

"You didn't say anything this morning?" said Arthur.

"No, for I was thinking things over. When I got to talking about
it with you fellows it all came out straight."

"Well, Jack got the prize anyhow," remarked Harry, "and I don't
suppose there is any use in saying anything about it. If you
didn't actually catch Pete in the act and recognize him, he could
easily say that he was not out of his tent that night, and Merritt
would back him up."

"Yes, of course, but if he knows that I and young Smith and a lot
more of the boys know it he won't put on so many frills after this;"

"No, he won't, but we don't go with him anyhow, and he bullies his
own set i